California & NYC most popular places to live.

California, Hawaii, and Florida remain the most popular states that U.S. adults would choose to live in if they could live in any state outside of their own, according to a new Harris Poll. Last year, these states were also ranked as the “Top 3” though in a slightly different order: Hawaii has moved to #2 and Florida has dropped to #3. When it comes to Americans’ choices for cities outside of their own, New York City comes in #1 for the seventh consecutive time as the U.S. city people would choose to live in or near.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll, a nationwide survey of 3,685 adults conducted online between August 8 and 17, 2006 by Harris Interactive®.

The next most popular states in which people would like to live are: North Carolina (#4, moving up substantially from last year’s #8); Texas (#5, also moving up from #8); Washington (#6, moving up from #11); Colorado (#7, dropping from #4); New York (#8, dropping from #5); Arizona (#9, dropping from #6); and Oregon (#10, dropping from #7).

One interesting thing to note is that seven of the 15 states are in the West and six of them are in the South. The only states outside of these areas are representatives of the mid-Atlantic region: New York, and Pennsylvania (which makes the list for the first time since these data have been collected). There are no states from the Midwest or Northeast in the top 15.

Favorite U.S. cities to live in:

Following New York City’s lead as a top U.S. city people would choose to live in or near, the next four cities are all in the West: San Francisco (#2, moving up from #4); San Diego (#3, dropping from #2); Seattle (#4, moving up from #5); and Las Vegas (#5, dropping from #3). Other cities in the top 10 include Honolulu (#6), Denver (#7), Atlanta (#7), Chicago (#9) and Boston (#10).

Returning to the list of the 15 top cities this year are Orlando at #14 and Austin at #15. Interestingly, while Florida is the third most popular state, the only city in Florida that makes the top 15 list is Orlando.

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